Gail M. Gerhart

Gail M. Gerhart is a member of Human Rights Watch Africa Advisory Committee.

"She worked in sub-Saharan Africa for 17 years before assuming her current post at The American University in Cairo. Most of her published work centers on black politics in South Africa. She is the author of Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (University of California Press, 1978), and the co-author of the seven volume series From Protest to Challenge: a Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990 (Indiana University Press and University of South Africa Press). Since 1990 she has been the Africa book reviewer for Foreign Affairs. She has twice testified before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa (1986 and 1987), and has served as a consultant to the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Columbia University, the Ford Foundation, and the publishers of Nelson Mandela's autobiography. She has a special interest in refugee issues, and served for two and a half years as the representative of the International Rescue Committee in Kenya (1977-79). In South Africa (1997-98) she served on an inter-university committee on the application of digital imaging technology to South African archival collections. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Africa advisory board of Human Rights Watch."

Gail is married to John D. Gerhart.

Background
Writing in 1979, Robert Molteno noted that Gail was part of Gwendolyn Carter's Research Team. She undertook research in 1963 on the national liberation movement called Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) which was formed in 1959. He continues:


 * "But there are far more important facts about Gail Gerhart than these. First, her husband is a fairly senior official of the Ford Foundation -- in 1974 he was head of its regional office in Nairobi, Kenya. Now, not only has the Ford Motor Company large manufacturing investments in South Africa (with an investment in 1973 of between 80 and 100 million dollars and a 15 to 20 percent share of the South African vehicle market), but the Ford Foundation in the 1950s gave major financial assistance to the South African Institute of Race Relations which was, and is, the leading fact-gathering institution in South Africa. What is notable is that the Foundation discontinued its assistance to the Institute, but a few years later used its funds to finance academic penetration of the liberation movements. This presumably, was on the assumption that radical change in South Africa could only come via the liberation movement, which the South Africa Institute of Race Relations had become very poor at reporting on since the movement had been made illegal in 1960."

Publications

 * Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of Ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Funded by the Ford Foundation
 * Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution Press [1972- ,vol. 1-4]; vol. 5, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.